Case Against Dominique Strauss-Kahn Crumbles

It had been awhile since we last heard from deposed International Monetary Fund chief and invaluable New York Post muse Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Then, late yesterday evening, The New York Times published an explosive piece about the crumbling state of the sexual-assault case against him. The paper reports that prosecutors are now questioning the credibility of the Sofitel maid whom Stauss-Kahn alleged raped. The unnamed hotel employee reportedly has ties to “criminal activities, including drug dealing and money laundering.” The Times reports:

[T]he woman had a phone conversation with an incarcerated man within a day of her encounter with Mr. Strauss-Kahn in which she discussed the possible benefits of pursuing the charges against him. The conversation was recorded.

That man, the investigators learned, had been arrested on charges of possessing 400 pounds of marijuana. He is among a number of individuals who made multiple cash deposits, totaling around $100,000, into the woman’s bank account over the last two years. The deposits were made in Arizona, Georgia, New York and Pennsylvania.

The investigators also learned that she was paying hundreds of dollars every month in phone charges to five companies. The woman had insisted she had only one phone and said she knew nothing about the deposits except that they were made by a man she described as her fiancé and his friends.

It’s worth noting that none of this information necessarily has any relevance to what happened in the hotel suite on May 14 (as a lawyer for the woman pointed out). Nonetheless, Strauss-Kahn’s legal team will appear in court tomorrow to request that their client be released from house arrest and permitted to move about the country. (Note to D.S.K.: There’s nowhere that much better than a Tribeca townhouse! Maybe somewhere in the West Village?) This request, the Times reports, “reflects likelihood that the serious charges against him will not be sustained.” What will the New York Post report, though? And what Francophobic pun will they use to do it? All this and more: yet to come.